Ethan Ruan (阮經天) and Tiffany Hsu (許瑋甯) are an on-again off-again couple that people just love to talk about, probably because Ruan always seem on the verge of going off the rails with yet another bimbo. The couple were spotted by Apple Daily down in Kenting last weekend, and while they continue to strenuously deny that they are together, Hsu was sporting a contraceptive patch with her black bikini, which had the expected effect of whipping up media curiosity, and the two where tracked down to a guesthouse they were sharing. Apple Daily thought this shockingly inconsiderate behavior on the part of Ruan and Hsu, especially when they try so hard to avoid the media spotlight in Taipei. The fashionable pair also got their stories in a muddle when questioned by the media after taking to the stage this week at Paul Smith and Ferragamo catwalk shows. This all seems rather disingenuous given Ruan’s reputation and his long association with Hsu, but the Apple Daily is relentless, to misquote the Air Supply song, in “making news out of nothing at all.”
Chen Chu-he (陳楚河), a co-star with Ruan on the hit TV series To Love You Is My Destiny (命中注定我愛你), is also keeping the paparazzi busy at all hours of the night. Chen has been getting plenty of coverage for his recent, tempestuous liaison with Ella Chen (陳嘉樺) of the girl-group S.H.E, but now his attention seems to have turned to the abundantly endowed lingerie model Wang Yu-fei (王毓菲), better known as Hsiung Hsiung (熊熊). For the record, Wang is said to have a 32F cup-size, and Next magazine suggests that this is more than sufficient reason for Chen’s change of heart. Wang is said to be generous with her charms, and according to Next she is a well-known presence on the Internet, appearing in various photo sites. A delightful image of Wang holding a NT$50 piece between her pendulous protuberances, one of many images on www.g-years.com, a Web forum, is recommended for anyone who shares Next magazine’s breast fixation.
Carrying on the theme of the body beautiful, Coco Chiang’s (蔣怡) success in the basketball romance Hot Shot (籃球火) is helping make the bronzed look more popular in white skin-obsessed Taiwan. Dark skin began to register on the style charts with the appearance of Guatemalan-Taiwanese model Liz Yang’s (楊莉思) and her involvement with singer David Tao (陶吉吉), and is being reinforced by the relentless barrage of images of Janet Hsieh (謝怡芬), host of Fun Taiwan, whose career has blossomed recently following her romance with her manager Li Ching-bai (李景白).
While Pop Stop is sure that the spike in Hsieh’s exposure it due totally to natural talent, there are others in the entertainment industry who seem less coy about getting a little help from a friend. Little Pan-pan (小潘潘) has been having something of a rough time recently, what with getting busted for drugs last November — she was cleared but her name got dragged through the mud — then the show she was hosting, Videoland’s The Incredible World (不可思議的世界) got the chop. To console herself, she spent NT$200,000 at the plastic surgeons before the Lunar New Year, and has now just moved into a new apartment costing nearly NT$30 million. Next magazine suggests that it is an endorsement contract from Q.T. Skin (六員環有限公司) owned by “close friend” Yen Chien-cheng (嚴健誠), that is keeping the wolf from Little Pan-pan’s door.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
March 2 to March 8 Gunfire rang out along the shore of the frontline island of Lieyu (烈嶼) on a foggy afternoon on March 7, 1987. By the time it was over, about 20 unarmed Vietnamese refugees — men, women, elderly and children — were dead. They were hastily buried, followed by decades of silence. Months later, opposition politicians and journalists tried to uncover what had happened, but conflicting accounts only deepened the confusion. One version suggested that government troops had mistakenly killed their own operatives attempting to return home from Vietnam. The military maintained that the
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
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